own government. caller: my concern is over the cost of using contractors. they have so many different business models that the government cannot control. we need to have a more flexible way to control what we do and what we do not do. it is almost impossible to stop serving today without this tremendous cost. -- something today without this tremendous cost. contracting is going to hire more than any other category of employment. however going to maintain a contract force that is going to continually rising cost -- rise in cost? guest: one of the reason we have so many contractors is we have taken those forces out of the military. rather than having a lot of people in uniform, which we might pay for for 30 years on the possibility that we go to war in iraq or afghanistan, we rely on contractors. contractors can be expensive, if you need to use them. if you have them on standby with a number of major companies who do this kind of thing, you are paying a minimal amount. we pay them some amount of money,